[sldev] [VWR] openAL -- Linux Audio

[Dzonatas]

Callum Lerwick wrote:
> This is how Open Source is supposed to work. If something is not
> working, you start a dialog with developers and get it fixed. You are
> not a passive consumer of product. You are part of the process.
>   
Ah... now I understand why you came bluntly on your remark about take it 
to the distributor. Access to products' blueprints and workflows never 
implied an obligation to the process on how to fix it. I don't deny that 
the implication is effective, but I don't push such religion upon others.

> We already expect OpenGL to be in place and working. Why is OpenAL any
> different?
>   
I think you answered your question with the tidbit about Creative Labs. 
We know there is support for GPUs and audio HW on Windows. That support 
is the foundation of Windows itself. Microsoft hates to see its own OS 
to be (para)virtualized because they know the support would become equal 
across OSs.

> We're talking Linux here. From a "business stance" Windows is the only
> platform that matters.
I disagree. Linux or Windows, we still have to come up with cost of 
implementation and stability. If that cost includes the chance that a 
developer has to go astray and fix another project that is out-of-scope 
of the original project, it makes it harder for that developer to be 
competitive.

> Hopefully in the long term, fmod will be
> dragged out into the street and shot
>   
>> Callum, we aren't even sure if you even tested SecondLife concurrently 
>> with all these other applications when you made the patch. Perhaps, 
>> there is a little magic being believed it would work.
>>     
>
> Well thank you for making presumptions about what I'm doing.
>
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=420991
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=343911
>   

Be sure to drag out SDL with FMOD and make the world a bit happier place.

> If there is a problem here, it needs to be pushed to the distribution's
> bug tracker, not hacked around by outside projects. If your distribution
> of choice is not interested in having OpenAL fully functional out of the
> box, then your distribution is rubbish.
>   

I think that cleared up we aren't quite on the same page. The 
distribution itself doesn't matter, as it is all Linux.  I was asked to 
elaborate when I stated I found it to not work nicely and I posted a way 
to at least let SecondLife to continue to function. Before the 
elaboration, it was still about SecondLife. The subject should have 
change, but go ahead and single me out in the crowd as a thread hijacker 
for not being one who changed the subject when I tried elaborate. (Let 
me get a gmail account and change my name for anonymous [coward] 
reputation =)

> You're derailing the thread with bikeshedding, and Fedora for one,
> already finished building our bikeshed a year ago. Feel free to copy
> ours. :)
>   

I work with them all (Apple, Windows, Linux flavors), but alas I don't 
have the resources to personally house them all. I'm not evangelistical 
with any particular platform.

Reading your bug report, "By default openal does not work with 
pulseaudio as openal defaults to oss and thus wants exclusive access to 
the device." I see your issue is similar to what I stated, that apps 
tend to default to ESD or OSS instead of working nicely with ALSA. =) It 
doesn't look like an issue just with Fedora, OpenAL, or PulseAudio, as 
it is more of a global issue. (probably more problematic on the 64bit 
side too)


Take care